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Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention
Attention can be oriented externally to the environment or internally to the mind, and can be derailed by interference from irrelevant information originating from either external or internal sources. However, few studies have explored the nature and underlying mechanisms of the interaction between...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5802789/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29410407 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20498-8 |
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author | Ziegler, David A. Janowich, Jacqueline R. Gazzaley, Adam |
author_facet | Ziegler, David A. Janowich, Jacqueline R. Gazzaley, Adam |
author_sort | Ziegler, David A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Attention can be oriented externally to the environment or internally to the mind, and can be derailed by interference from irrelevant information originating from either external or internal sources. However, few studies have explored the nature and underlying mechanisms of the interaction between different attentional orientations and different sources of interference. We investigated how externally- and internally-directed attention was impacted by external distraction, how this modulated internal distraction, and whether these interactions were affected by healthy aging. Healthy younger and older adults performed both an externally-oriented visual detection task and an internally-oriented mental rotation task, performed with and without auditory sound delivered through headphones. We found that the addition of auditory sound induced a significant decrease in task performance in both younger and older adults on the visual discrimination task, and this was accompanied by a shift in the type of distractions reported (from internal to external). On the internally-oriented task, auditory sound only affected performance in older adults. These results suggest that the impact of external distractions differentially impacts performance on tasks with internal, as opposed to external, attentional orientations. Further, internal distractibility is affected by the presence of external sound and increased suppression of internal distraction. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5802789 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58027892018-02-14 Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention Ziegler, David A. Janowich, Jacqueline R. Gazzaley, Adam Sci Rep Article Attention can be oriented externally to the environment or internally to the mind, and can be derailed by interference from irrelevant information originating from either external or internal sources. However, few studies have explored the nature and underlying mechanisms of the interaction between different attentional orientations and different sources of interference. We investigated how externally- and internally-directed attention was impacted by external distraction, how this modulated internal distraction, and whether these interactions were affected by healthy aging. Healthy younger and older adults performed both an externally-oriented visual detection task and an internally-oriented mental rotation task, performed with and without auditory sound delivered through headphones. We found that the addition of auditory sound induced a significant decrease in task performance in both younger and older adults on the visual discrimination task, and this was accompanied by a shift in the type of distractions reported (from internal to external). On the internally-oriented task, auditory sound only affected performance in older adults. These results suggest that the impact of external distractions differentially impacts performance on tasks with internal, as opposed to external, attentional orientations. Further, internal distractibility is affected by the presence of external sound and increased suppression of internal distraction. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-02-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5802789/ /pubmed/29410407 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20498-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Ziegler, David A. Janowich, Jacqueline R. Gazzaley, Adam Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention |
title | Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention |
title_full | Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention |
title_fullStr | Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention |
title_full_unstemmed | Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention |
title_short | Differential Impact of Interference on Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention |
title_sort | differential impact of interference on internally- and externally-directed attention |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5802789/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29410407 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20498-8 |
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